Marine lives on in loved ones’ hearts

Britt, of Decatur, is the latest service member honored by the Atlanta Vietnam Veterans Business Association. The group annually selects a recipient for the honor, personalizing a conflict that ended more than 35 years ago. Britt was the top vote-getter among six nominees the association considered. Members cited Britt’s age, courage and his medal in selecting him.

A plaque explaining his actions during the attack was unveiled last week at Georgia Veterans Memorial Park, located in Black Shoals Park in Conyers.

“Fearlessly moving across the fire-swept terrain, he reached the fortified bunker and, delivering a heavy volume of accurate fire, killed four enemy soldiers and silenced the hostile fire,” reads his citation for the Silver Star.

Britt, survived by a brother and his mother, is buried at Floral Hills Memorial Park in Tucker. But he lives on in the hearts of those who knew him.

A retired Army general recalls a brother who left home and never came back. Another veteran remembers a hunting and fishing buddy with whom he traipsed the woods of DeKalb County. An aging Marine thinks daily about a young man who helped him survive the nocturnal terrors of war.

They all recall March 30, 1968, Britt’s last day alive.

Handshake, hug

The airplane waited. The two shook hands, because that’s what men do, then hugged, because that’s what brothers do. Ted Britt, “a perfect big brother,” turned and boarded the plane, bound for Vietnam. Tim Britt, desperate to be as much a man as his brother, was 7.

The younger brother, now 50, is a retired Georgia Army National Guard brigadier general. Of all the memories in his life, none stands out more than the moment, four decades ago, when he learned that his brother had been killed.

It was spring. Open-window weather had returned to Georgia. Tim was walking home from school on a warm afternoon.

Approaching the driveway, he saw it filled with cars. Inside the house, aunts, uncles and other relatives stood in quiet little groups. His sister pulled him aside and gave him the news.

“It was a shock,” Tim Britt said. “At the time, I didn’t have a sense of how brave he was.”

Young Tim soon figured it out. His brother had died protecting his fellow Marines. When he was grown, Tim Britt decided, he would be like his brother and join the military.

Tim Britt went to North Georgia College & State University, then became an officer in the Army. He served 30 years of active and reserve duty, retiring in November.

Two years ago, deployed to Afghanistan, Britt spent time at a base filled with Marines. Being around the young Marines, said Britt, was a poignant reminder of the brother he’d lost. “It was a lot like looking at my brother,” he said.

He also gained some insights of what the last four months of Ted’s life must have been like.

Heading toward war

Ray Anthony stepped carefully, a 20-gauge shotgun in his arms. It was a fall afternoon in 1965, and he was hunting squirrels in woodland that lay in the path of a planned highway, I-285.

The boy heard some rustling up ahead, stopped. Another youth — Ted Britt, also holding a shotgun — appeared in a clearing. Thus began a friendship.

“That’s all we did for the next three years — hunting, fishing, camping out,” said Anthony, now 62.

Talking about events a world away, too. The Vietnam War showed no signs of abating.

“We knew we would probably be drafted,” said Anthony, a retired lawyer and insurance executive who lives in Waleska. “So we decided to join the best outfit instead.” They agreed to become Marines.

Britt got the jump on his friend, enlisting in July 1967 and shipping off to Vietnam in December that year. By spring 1968, when Anthony was in basic training at Parris Island, S.C., Britt had been fighting for nearly four months.

When he learned from a base chaplain that his friend had been killed, said Anthony, “I was ready to kill some VC [Viet Cong] at that point.”

He never went to Vietnam. “They [officers] found out I could type,” Anthony said. He served two years in Marine Corps administrative offices in Washington before coming back to Georgia.

Four decades later, Anthony is still distressed that Britt was in such a hurry to fight.

“If he’d have waited for me [to join], I’d have been there,” said Anthony. His voice cracked, steadied; Anthony took a breath. “And maybe he wouldn’t have died.”

‘Pie-eyed with fright’

March 30, 1968, came wreathed in fog. Marines assigned to 1st Platoon, B Company of the 26th Marine Regiment’s 1st Battalion, moved quietly in a morning patrol. Tendrils of mist, like ghostly fingers, reached for them.

The attack came just as the mist thinned. Rifles snapped. Bullets whizzed out of the fog. The Marines hit the ground. One was Pfc. Mike McCauley, convinced he was about to die.

“I thought, ‘This is it,’” recalled McCauley, now 63.

A Marine — Britt — rose from the forest floor. He charged a nest where Vietcong soldiers manned automatic weapons, his rifle spitting bullets. The nest fell silent, its occupants killed. Then he charged another hole, where enemy soldiers shot back. Britt, mortally wounded, fell.

Only later did McCauley, also wounded in the fight, realize that his new best friend, Britt, had been killed.

They’d bonded for the goofiest of reasons. “It was the way we talked,” said McCauley, whose Boston accent remains as hard-edged as when he got off the plane in Vietnam in November 1967, despite three decades years of living in Washington state. “I had this accent, and he was from the South. ... We sounded so different.”

They also shared a secret with each other. “We were pie-eyed with fright.”

“At night, we’d whisper to each other, waiting for an attack,” said McCauley. “We shared laughs, sometimes we shared tears. We shared being scared to death.”

And so McCauley, who flew across the country last week for the ceremony honoring his buddy, joined a dead Marine’s little brother and former hunting pal. They and others gathered at the Rockdale County park for a ceremony honoring the short life of Pfc. Ted Britt, USMC.

It was a fine service, with an airplane and helicopter flyover, a color guard and speech and prayers. Bagpipes played their high, sad song. Old veterans offered their salute to a brother.

With prayer and shaky salute, they made that annual payment.